Fall Pictures with JKP {Sneak Peek}

I am so in love with how these turned out. I am excited for everyone to see the rest. I am going to try and resist the temptation to put them on the blog when I get them, I don’t want to spoil everyone’s Christmas cards! But I saw the proofs yesterday, and they are really good. ALL of them. And I can’t pick just 10 or 15, so I am going to have to buy them all. {Sigh} Someday I will look back and not regret all the money we spend on photography, right??

The location and lighting were perfection, and it doesn’t hurt that my kids are ridiculously cute. I’m talking some serious cuteness, y’all. My only regret is we didn’t get any of the kids together. I was wanting to get a family shot (for Christmas cards), and some of them alone, and honestly I didn’t even realize we didn’t get any shots of them together until I saw these! Whoops. Major mom fail. But in my defense photo shoots and kids are hectic. I know these look really sweet and peaceful, but in real life it was chaos. I guess that’s the mark of a great photographer.

 

Ohh you thought those were good?? They get better. . . .

Did you fall out of your chair from her adorableness??

Love this sweet smile, and the boy wearing it.

A side note, these will forever be remembered as “the pictures that were taken when Stratton had that horrible hair cut”. It’s really bad. It wasn’t someone we have used before and I don’t think she’s ever cut little boy hair before. It’s super short in the back and longer on top, and not much blending in between, and now he has a perpetual cow-lick and the front is weird and ragged. . . The worst thing is that she cut it so short in the back there is really nothing we can do till it grows out some. Well, besides evening it out and cut the top super short, and I just can’t do that for sure not now that it’s turned cold!

First week of November!

Last weekend we had planned to get up and get out of town! Jarrod was off of work and I took off on Friday. Our plan was to drop the kids off at my mom and dad’s and then Jarrod and I were heading for the hills. . .literally. We decided to rent a cabin in Branson like we did last year. Well, Stratton woke up with a tummy ache, I chalked it up to a late night and too much candy from Trunk-or Treat. But I went ahead and gave him some zofran, to help in case he was nauseated. He laid around, which I thought was because zofran makes him sleepy. We didn’t get around as quickly as we had hoped and it was 11am before we were headed out. We had to run a few errands, so we decided to go grab a bite of lunch first, Stratton picked “Good Luck Charlie’s”- aka O’Charely’s. While we were there he acted really tired. He barely ate a bite. We were on the way out of town driving down the interstate when all the sudden Stratton started throwing up. It was just once and it was mostly phlegm.  I had a feeling (and from past experiences) that he probably had strep again. Arden was sound asleep in the carseat, so rather than risk waking her up, we ran home and changed Stratton’s clothes, then we went directly to the dr office. Jarrod sat in the truck with Arden while I took Stratton in. It was just a little after noon, and didn’t take very long at all to get back and have him looked at. Sure enough they swabbed his throat and he was positive for strep. So, we had 2 options- get a 10 day supply of antibiotics and he might feel better in a couple of days OR get a shot and he would be like new in 12 hours or less.  . . can you guess which route I went?? Injection it is!! Stratton was furious, but it actually wasn’t as bad as before. We had to wait 20 minutes after the shot to make sure he didn’t have any adverse reactions, so I thought why not go ahead and get my flu shot! Stratton thought this was really funny. He wouldn’t even hold my hand! Stinker. He just laughed. By the time we left the doctor’s office (maybe an hour tops) he was already acting better. We decided to go ahead and try to make the most of the weekend and stay with our original plans- I mean it was like now or never if we were going to get away anytime till 2014!

I forgot to mention that while we were loading up Jarrod threw a bag in the back of the truck and tweaked his back again. He was hurting pretty bad but felt like he would be alright still going to Branson. He grabbed some muscle relaxers and pain pills, just in case!

We dropped the kiddos off at my mom and dad’s. Arden had slept pretty much the entire time since we left the restaurant! She had a great nap!! And Stratton had slept all the way to HR so he was feeling better. I think we finally got headed towards Branson around 4pm! We went straight to Branson Landing and walked through Bass Pro and then had dinner at TL&C. Jarrod was hurting more so we didn’t do much looking around (plus, most of the stuff was closed by the time we got done eating) so we ran by Krispy Kreme (the Hot Doughnut light was on so we HAD to stop) and then to Walgreens to get a few things before making it to our cabin at about 10pm.

Saturday, we slept late. Jarrod slept till about 8:30 and I didn’t get up till 11:30!! It was so nice! I felt bad Jarrod was laid up on the couch with the heating pad on his back when I got up- poor guy the muscle relaxers weren’t helping at all. We didn’t have any plans- there were a few places at the outlet mall I wanted to check out, so we just hung out in the cabin. We ate lunch there and ended up not getting out till 3pm! We shopped a little. Jarrod felt like the more he walked the better his back was feeling. For a little while. We decided to skip going to a show and went back to the cabin after supper. We didn’t even hit up ColdStone- which is unheard of!

Sunday we got up and were checked out by 9:30. We thought we’d stop at Bob Evan’s and have breakfast, but it took us an HOUR to get there because of traffic! It was insane! Then we get there and they tell us it’s a 25 minute wait! It’s already 10:30, so we decide that in 30 mins we could be in Harrison and then just stop for lunch! We went a different route home, since we were going to HR first to get the kids, and it was much faster. We got there a little after 3pm. The kids were napping (actually, Arden was still at grandma and grandpa’s house) and my mom was at the church at a baby shower, so we had to wait a little while before we could leave. We ended up getting back to J’boro just in time for church. After church we went and ate Mexican with our group of friends. We got home and I was getting Arden ready for bed and Jarrod was bringing the bags in when I heard Stratton in the Living room- throwing up again. It was bad this time. I gave him some Phenergan this time and got him, the couch, the floor and the bathroom all cleaned up and he seemed to be alright after that. Who knows?!

I had already marked Monday off at work in hopes that I could spend the day working on our garage sale stuff, but since Jarrod messed his back up he couldn’t very well go get all our stuff out of the storage unit, so that wasn’t going to happen and with Stratton getting sick again I just decided to stay home with him and make sure he ate bland food and didn’t get too excited! He was fine. He played and took a really good nap. He has been fine the rest of the week. I guess he finally licked it! I am afraid we are on the road to having his tonsils removed in the near future though.

Arden must be cutting teeth because she is not sleeping well at all. All weekend and week she has been up in the middle of the night. Wednesday night was a really bad night. I think I got about 4 hours of sleep. Jarrod spent the hours from about 4-6 in the recliner with her. She did sleep better last night, so I’m hopeful it was just her teeth!

Stratton had his first “official” field trip on Thursday. They went to the Nature Center, and he Loved it! He was excited they got to ride the bus (with NO seatbelts!!—his words) and they got to see baby crocodiles, snacks and fish. And they got to see some of the bigger fish getting fed small goldfish (and not the cheese crackers, REAL live goldfish—again his words) he was full of it telling us all kinds of stuff.

We decided to cancel the garage sale. Margie has a hairline fracture in her foot and it’s been giving her a lot of trouble and pain, and both Jennifer and I haven’t had the time to get our stuff together. So looks like it will be postponed till spring! The good news is not we have a weekend with nothing major planned, which will be nice!